The Black Russian - Softcover

Alexandrov, Vladimir

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802122299 ISBN 13: 9780802122292

Publisher: Grove Press, 2014

Synopsis

The Black Russian is the incredible true story of Frederick Bruce Thomas, born in 1872 to former slaves who became prosperous farmers in Mississippi. After his father was brutally murdered, Frederick left the South and worked as a waiter in Chicago and Brooklyn. Seeking greater freedom, he traveled to London, then crisscrossed Europe, and in a highly unusual choice for a black American at the time went to Russia.

Because he found no color line there, Frederick settled in Moscow, becoming a rich and famous owner of variety theaters and restaurants. When the Bolshevik Revolution ruined him, he barely escaped to Constantinople, where he made another fortune by opening celebrated nightclubs as the "Sultan of Jazz." However, the long arm of American racism, the xenophobia of the new Turkish Republic, and Frederick’s own extravagance landed him in debtor’s prison. He died in Constantinople in 1928.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"A spirited tale of boundary-crossing and history-bucking, every bit as colorful as it seems improbable." 
Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of the New York Times best-seller Cleopatra: A Life



"This well-written book is about one of the most fascinating black men of modern times. Like Jack Johnson, Frederick Thomas was a brilliant, proud and ambitious black man who experienced the heights of success and the depths of failure - in a foreign land. Don't miss this masterful work!" 
Cornel West, public intellectual, author of Race Matters, The Rich and the Rest of Us  (with Tavis Smiley)
 
"As a reader, I found myself fascinated by this well-written story. As a writer, I found myself envious of Vladimir Alexandrov for having discovered such a remarkable man whose life, both triumphant and tragic, spans continents, wars and a revolution--and whom no one seems to have noticed before. An extraordinary and gripping book." 
Adam Hochschild, prize-winning author of the New York Times best-seller To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918


"A fascinating tale of culture clash and historical change, researched with energy and written with verve."  
 Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize winning author of the international best-seller Gulag: A History


"Hang on for the ride of a lifetime. With the verve of a novelist . . . Alexandrov takes one on an adventure through pre-war Mississippi, London, Paris, Tsarist Russia and the Bolshevik Revolution, ending up in decadent Constantinople."
  John Bailey, author of The Lost German Slave Girl
 
"In The Black Russian, Vladimir Alexandrov tells the keenly researched and vividly written story of one of the more extraordinary characters in African-American history.  Alexandrov deftly brings to life the succession of complex milieus in the United States, France, Russia, and Turkey in which Frederick Bruce Thomas achieved both his improbable successes and his haunting defeats.  This is a tale to remember." 
Arnold Rampersad, award-winning and best-selling biographer of Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, and Jackie Robinson 
 
"That truth is ever stranger than fiction is underscored by the story of Frederick Bruce Thomas. The highs and lows of Thomas's unlikely life journey are skillfully unfurled by Vladimir Alexandrov."  
Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, author of the New York Times best-seller A Slave in the White House 
 

"As the granddaughter of a family that escaped from Russia because of the Bolshevik Revolution, I read The Black Russian in one sitting.  Vladimir Alexandrov has done more than tell the story of a forgotten man, he has woven a fascinating tapestry of Moscow life before the October Revolution. The reader is offered a unique front-row seat to Moscow's Pre-Revolutionary beau monde and a hair-raising escape days before the Bolshevik takeover.  Frederick Thomas's unlikely ascent from Mississippi farmboy to Moscow impresario is a surprising tale with those most American of themes: tenacity and self-invention." 
 Olga Andreyev Carlisle, author of Solzhenitsyn and the Secret Circle
 

"Vladimir Alexandrov provides a powerful counter-narrative to the conventional Great Migration story of southern blacks migrating North en masse in the decades after the Civil War. . . . In assembling the facts of Thomas's story, Alexandrov relates in vivid detail the political, financial, and emotional highs and lows of this man's incredible life."  
  Carla L. Peterson, author of Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City

About the Author:

Vladimir Alexandrov received a Ph. D. in comparative literature from Princeton. He taught Russian literature and culture at Harvard before moving to Yale, where he is B.E. Bensinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures. He is the author of books on Bely, Nabokov, and Tolstoy, and has published numerous articles on various other Russian writers and topics.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0802122299
• ISBN 13: 9780802122292
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336